Nature as Metabolism
Last Time Nature as
Social
Construct
This time: Nature as
Metabolism
• Nature as material reality
• Nature as our life-support system
"I know the human being and fish can
coexist peacefully.”
-- George W Bush
Human-Environment
Relationships
• Hunting & Gathering
• Agriculture
• Industry
Hunter-Gatherers
Hunter Gatherers
• Depend on renewable resources
• support only small populations
• changed environment
– Fire
– Hunting
Agricultural Revolution
Agricultural Revolution
• Hunter-gatherer populations expand
– Begin to deplete environment
• Need to develop agriculture
• Leads to
– permanent settlement
– cities
Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
• Agriculture becomes truly commercial
– Second & Third agricultural revolutions
• Science, technology aid exploitation of
resources
• Fossil fuels & non-renewable resources
developed on a large scale
Growth of Cities
Ecological Imperialism
• Rise of European Empires transformed
global ecosystems
• Plants, animals etc moved from region to
region
– Deliberately
– Accidentally
Globalization
Globalization: Environmental
Impact
• Going global:
– industrial resource consumption
– industrial pollution
– habitat destruction
Globalization comes to China
Resource consumption
Pollution
Power Plant Smoke Plume
Sisak, Croatia
Lima, Peru
Manila
Bangkok
Cologne
St Petersburg
Smog, Bo Hai, China
Above LAX 1980
"Hollywood is the only place where you can
wake up in the morning and hear the birds
coughing in the trees."
-- Joe Frisco
Fires in Africa 25 Sep 2000
Climate Change
• Release of greenhouse gases by people
will increase global temperatures
• Deranges weather and climate patterns
• Threatening food, water supplies
– We already have 6.7 billion people
• Melting ice caps will raise sea levels
• Effectively changing nature-as-metabolism
Habitat Destruction
N. Vancouver Island after clearcut
Implications
• For Nature-as-Metabolism
– Dramatically altered environments
– Challenge to global survival
• For Nature-as-construct
– People are challenging industrial
modernity
"There are no passengers on spaceship
earth. We are all crew.”
- Marshall McLuhan
“The best things in life aren’t things.”
-- Art Buchwald